Friday, December 16, 2005

Found a poem, Kipling's "If"

My friend Matt recently started a blog at Blogger, and he choose for the title, "Filling the Unforgiving Minute." One day when I hadn't quite remembered the URL yet, I did a search on Blogger for "unforgiving minute," to find his blog. I was surprised at how many search results there were. Turns out the phrase comes from a famous Kipling poem, "If." I didn't know it. It is quite something.

This might be the most quoted part:

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

2 comments:

Matt Dick said...

It's my all-time favorite poem, I believe. Kipling is known for such a variety of othyer things, but his poetry is often forgotten. "If" is right up there.

The stanza you quoted is probably number one, but there are so many more in just that short poem. Another great one:

"If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;"

I just read it through and felt the need to cut&paste every line in, so I think I'll go back to my blog and post it there. Great stuff.

msd

Josh Gentry said...

I should read more Kipling, both prose and fiction. I have long admired the poem, "Tommy." I stumbled across it while browsing through the Norton Anthology of Poetry.

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